memetic strategies
Project: Polytopia

Plug n' play.

Content —> Form (structure) —> Aesthetics —> Meaning —> Intention alignment —> Action potential —> Self-organizing intention realization —> rinse. repeat. rinse. repeat.



identifying emergence GEN002 / form: @notthisbody / icon design: @gavinkeech / CC-BY-SA

Memetic Computing covers the general aspects of population-based problem-solving methods that are enhanced with some form of cultural-analog mechanism. For instance, Memetic Computing involves also software ecology. That is, studies of the enormous number of software projects are shedding light on how software development takes place and the many social and technical issues related to this fundamental XXI century activity. Related emerging trends that also fall squarely within the remit of Memetic Computing are search based software engineering including the very latest trends on software self-healing, self-assembly and self-management. Memetic Computing is thus an emergent discipline that seeks to distil principles derived both from nature and human societies (i.e. memes and self-organizing mechanisms) as to bring forth the creation of so called Living Technology. The main areas of scientific interest covered by Living Technology, and upon which Memetic Computing would have in near future a definite impact, is the interface between nano-bio-technology and information technology with the ultimate aim of creating new, novel production systems with the properties of self-organization, self-assembly, evolution, learning and, more generally, adaptive complexity. It is also essential to remark that Memetic Computing is also having an impact far beyond technical systems. For example, policy makers and businesses are using memetic strategies (previously called viral marketing) to influence public opinion and deliver effective change at a massive scale through the harnessing and leveraging of memetic concepts operating from small, perhaps unnoticeable, interactions. That is, Memetic computing is playing a key role in the design of bottom-up strategies for the achievement of large societal and technological changes. In this scenario, memetic simulations play a key role in the modeling of strategies and their potential outcomes. - The Emergent Technologies Task Force on Memetic Computing


a possible process - MA GEN002 / form: @notthisbody / icon design: @gavinkeech / CC-BY-SA

what role does chaos play in this process? the existence of free radicals generates new trajectories. how can we design for chaordic emergent synchronicity?

Fri, Jul 9, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: architecture, mapping, , polytopia, cartography, memetic computing, memetics
Sent to project: Polytopia

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On Social Learning, Sensemaking Capacity and Collective Intelligence
Project: Polytopia

Wed, Jul 7, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: concept mapping, knowledge cartography, education, knowledge federation, sensemaking, dialogue mapping, decision making
Sent to project: Polytopia

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the future of junto: top(OS) blueprint GEN002
Project: Polytopia

Junto & beyond - further generations and explanations coming soon.



also find full image HERE

in collab with @venessamiemis & @gavinkeech

Sat, Jun 26, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: architecture, collective intelligence, Future, polytopia, narrative, metaverse, topos, cartography, subjective reality, infocology, knowmadism
Sent to project: Polytopia

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I am a psychoterrorist...
Project: Polytopia

...or that's what they call me.

i remember an early example of AUREC - aura recognition (formerly referred to as augmented reality). it was called Add-Art - a firefox plugin (remember that?) that blocked all the adds on websites and replaced them with curated art, it changed every two weeks. i remember not seeing ads for years - the art worked is magic in its immersive native environment - it probably affected me more subconsciously than consciously. we saw in it possibility of freedom and control over our own experience of C(_)yberspace, unmediated by a purely economic interest.

the big brands gave up on billboards and benevolently handed dominion over Default to the old school street artists and the smaller brands, while passing out contacts locked to branded layers to the people that couldn't afford the technology, with the money they saved on printing and renting billboard space. Why pay rent on a billboard when you could just as easily create a layer of reality, offer some value and watch the population grow, right?

the fragile consensus reality, as predicted, did fracture, fractallize, into a multitude of collective realities. we didn't move quick enough. maybe we couldn't have moved quickly enough. the Brands did - creating unique layers of reality and incentivicing habitation - sweepstakes, gifts, contexts, services, affiliate systems, hard to turn those down - a huge fucking pyramid scheme, completely unregulated. fucking addictive. The more time you spend dialed into one reality, the more value you get in return. or so they make you think. some are walled gardens. some are exclusive and private - like those members only clubs in the airport, only for the big spenders - or the influential. not to say they aren't all bad - at the beginning there was some real creativity. But basically the message was, don't inhabit your own reality, inhabit ours. fucking tricked into thinking that you're active but its passivity all over again, bullshit Pavlovian model of freedom of action -a complete fucking unconscious subversion of the subjective experience. the population numbers of top layers are just as closely watched as the stock market. the most common of these layers follow the exact same model as in 2010 - providing a service to its inhabitants and offering them value in return, while auctioning your data and attention of to the highest bidder.

I am a psychoterrorist, shifting the phase of the layers - blending, compositing - planting triggers - creating entrances and exits into alternative layers. This is my art. Triggers act as a virus encountering a host - a simple access command interaction with an every day object, and perception of the current layer is imperceptibly, or perceptibly, shifted. Sometimes we want to create a juxtaposition of layers, simply that. my colleagues, some are drawn to a simple addition of metadata to an everyday object - some do the same as the early street artists but paint with code. Some are satisfied with a simple prank, some with a statement, a simple but basic change to the virtual scenery, but the layer is quickly debugged. The more subtle the trigger, the better - users may not be even aware of the change at first. but the act of subverting one user's view of a collective reality within the context of networked vision and the collective view starts to get buggy as vision systems try to resolve the error. like a virus - the bug propagates itself as more views clash and collective networked vision deteriorates until the virus renders the host incapacitated. Then someone somewhere decides its time for a full system reload, but only at the worst case - the layer is not likely to gain back the population it had before after an attack.



The breaking apart of a collective reality gets messy, sometimes. psychoterrorism is a considered a serious offence. the government has opened up state mental institutions again, more every day, research laboratories, case studies, experimental test facilities, to deal with the newest in brain diseases and conditions that come more as a consequence of schizophrenic branded realities than the actions of psychoterrorists (not to say there weren't some mistakes).

I live in collage, dial in, drift out through networked visions, inhabit several layers and identities at once. my reality exists within the shifting perception and interaction with the multiple layers of metadata, simultaneously creating the hypersynapses between. with each migration, we grow stronger. this is the biggest banyan tree i've ever seen.

there are still many who live in Default. but the barrier between the two, a line drawn in drifting sands. this membrane is permeable at its most solid. what i'm most afraid of is the bliss of ignorance.

Am I the psychoterrorist? or are they?






———————————————————————————————————————————————————

*images by Ishan of NotThisBody
*part I of a yet unnamed series of posts

Thu, Jun 3, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: alternate reality game, ARG, subjective, psychoterrorism, aurec, AR, concensus reality
Sent to project: Polytopia

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From Citizen Kane to Knowmadism
Project: Polytopia

Citizen Kane -> aesthetics -> story -> reality -> perception -> senses -> information -> infocologies -> privacy -> Facebook -> data mining -> personal narratives -> human freedoms -> government control -> sur-, sous-veillance -> commodification of personal data -> data-mining personal and collective infocologies -> knowmadism



(75:18 min, 192 kbps, mono mp3 – 51.7mb, DL it HERE)

“that’s some pretty trippy shit, Mr. Ishan” – a student



This is a lecture I gave on May 25th to a class of 14 year old high school freshman. For the last 4 months I’ve had the opportunity to teach three levels of Film courses in high school as a long term substitute, with about 100 students from 14-17 years old. In this time, I’ve asked them to take a closer look at the ongoing sophistication of our relationship with media as consumers and creators, and the roles of story in our identities and existence, individually and collectively – a conversation that is sorely lacking from the education of today’s youth.

I see outdated paradigms worm their way through the plasticity of the minds, solidifying the worldview of these students and I know that its not too late. That if we have the conversation together, they are open, willing and able to reframe their understandings. These Millenials, these Digital Natives (of which I suppose I am one) have an inherent flexibility to adapt to new paradigms – we update ourselves with each new generation of technology that emerges, migrate social networks and services, and live a life of multi-linear existence – its native to our OS.

But this multi-linear existence is being forced to inhabit an old paradigm of knowledge gathering, learning, and perception of the world around us that is propogated by the current system of education. It’s this dichotomy which kills the ”culture” – distractions reign. Since we’re not being told what changes technology brings to our models of reality, we tend to fall into a passive understanding of the world around us based on outdated consensual understandings.

Yet – and the hope is strong – I’ve learned that if you can have the conversation with the youth – tell them something that breaks apart their conceptions and provides a basis on which to build them anew and embrace other points of view – …well, that’s all that you can do.

We have to have the conversation when the youth is young. To implant ideas and concepts in their minds when they are still fresh, models of mind that allow the inherent plasticity of mind that comes with that youth to extend through our lives - that which so many who have lost that plasticity work so hard to overcome.I’ve had the luck to learn from these students during the process of sharing with them – its forced me to learn to communicate my own points of view simply and clearly; it’s deepened my understanding of the reality I’m living through with them. This is a thank you to all my students who have been open and willing to share with me.

In my humble opinion, every teacher must learn to have this conversation with their students – to contextualize what they teach to students with the flow of knowledge and events surrounding us, in our daily existence – to learn how to learn with them, not to teach from a static information ecology, to embrace the fractured flow of information coming from each mind and mutually co-create the narratives our of existence.

Sat, May 29, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: reality, perception, information, privacy, Aesthetics, story, senses, infocology, facebook, data mining, personal narratives, sousveillance, knowmadism
Sent to project: Polytopia

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ShiftShapers

NotThisBody & ThisIsMeta share...

ShiftShapers: an immediated autodocumentary

I heard a quote from somewhere, forget where... "The baby boomer generation will be known more for what they do in their 60s than what they did in the 60s."



Shiftshaping implies:

(1) Sharing our individual experience, motivations, wisdom & vision
(2) Consolidating individual wisdoms towards collective actions
(3) Minds open to the evolution of ideas/approaches/methods
(4) A willingness to share resources
(5) A strong commitment to collaboration

Licensed under:
CC Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0

*Extended discussions will be put up online over the next couple weeks.
* thanks to Gabriel Shalom for discussions around Immediated Autodocumentary

Mon, Feb 15, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: collaboration, future, collective intelligence, Transformation, mathematics, participatory, innertainment

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Open Society Structures - Algorithm Tryptic
Project: Polytopia

This is a study that explores the notion of direct, participative and processual democracy. The research presents a series of abstract structures, providing a framework for bringing together egalitarian values, collaborative perspectives and edifying voices in an equal and open decision-making process.

It includes a basic taxonomy of social, economic and political concepts relevant to the creation of a perfect society, showing the direction of dependencies, feedback interactions, and the relative significance of qualities and activities.

In the flow of political discourse it is sometime easy to forget the foundations of a virtuous society, though we do remain aware of the mistakes and the civic achievements of secular ideologies, religions and governments.

Today, we possess sufficient cultural, economic and technological resources to introduce a better global society; one instructed by shared wisdom flowing freely through networked media, in a system previously considered impossible. A collective destiny can be shaped using the power of networked activity, allowing citizens to communicate, share, educate and legislate.  

- Paolo Cirio

Thu, Dec 31, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: architecture, ideographics, concept mapping, collective intelligence, topos, politics, democracy, taxonomies, economics
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Interacting Arts
Project: Start your own revolution

INTERACTING ARTS is one or all of the following: a group of cross-disciplinary
artists, media critics, an activist network, a conspiracy, a brand,
a think-tank and a magazine which is circulated both on the web and in
print. We aim to inspire and activate people into becoming our fellow
creators of fully lived and experienced lives. Our theories are nothing
other than the theories of our real life and of the possibilities experienced
or perceived in it. We strive to coordinate our refusal of existential poverty
through affirmation of creativity, co-operation, solidarity, play and
our blistering desire for freedom.

Two issues of the Interacting Arts magazine. Find them also here: IA05, IA06

EDIT: seems like only the first 5 pages are showing up, so either visit the scribd links or the links above for the full versions

Ia International 05 A

During a live role-play we construct a new reality together. As children
of a post-modern paradigm we have been taught that “everyone experiences
the world in a different way” and that “no way of looking at the
world is less valuable than any other”. Ergo, if we create a reality, it has
the same value as the “real” reality. The only difference is that we have
the power over our collectively created reality. We can disappear – live
beyond sheepish politicians, invasive corporations, a troubled past, a fatassed
patriarchy and a state monopoly of violence. Together we write
new social protocols, find an aesthetic, develop a rhythm of life and allow
our bodies to become tools for new, interesting ways to interact.

MIDDLE GROUND
Of course it must be possible to find tools for interaction between collective realities and consensus reality. Why not be satisfied with temporary zones? Perhaps this is what we should do, and what we, in a way, are doing. That means we can pause a while, rethink, and start fresh. Another path is to make collective re-interpretations of consensus reality in order to break free from its constraints.

Ia International 06

There is nothing to stop us from forming many alternative bubbles which
can cooperate within federative structures. They can communicate and
trade in some fitting manner. Perhaps through potlatch, after all. Imagine
being a vagabond of realities – what if a biking trip between Stockholm
and the suburb Södertälje could offer as diverse cultural shifts as between
Wall Street and Mecca? Imagine a network of people and groups with
a common approach – the creation of new worlds.

Sat, Dec 5, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: reality, architecture, entertainment, particapatory entertainment, subjective, subjective reality, interacting arts, ideographics
Sent to project: Start your own revolution

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building a house on the water
Project: Polytopia

what takes an idea from inception to actualization & execution, the visualization & realization of that initial invisible spark?

what keeps it in the realm of thought, of talk? what keeps it from reaching through to the visible and starting a fire? is is that we don't feel "ready"? don't feel we have the resources necessary to begin?


Hope Floats
by notthisbody

"While idealistic architects, futurists, sociologists, philosophers - are in an endless search for creating the perfect island out of society, in a context totally foreign and segmented, there is a group of 15 people actually doing it. But its not just the creation of their world - but rather the connections they are gonna establish by sailing with the world that seems disconnected in a communication society. They are building a house on a boat - and its more than a house - its a multi purpose space - that lets you live on it, move with it, float with it and do service! Its a purposeful house. What an attempt...."


the floating doctors have never been "ready" - they've scratched and struggled, begged, borrowed (but not stolen), slogged through the dirty work, the tedious work, the shit work & done the needful. and they still struggling. but it is a necessary one.

the momentum gathers around them gains something of the autopoietic. their house is already floating, though they're not yet on the ocean.

we have our invisible spark on SpaceCollective in the form of the Polytopia Project, but we need to start its active realization. SpaceCollective is a think-tank; think-tanks have output. what is ours? is it stuck on the level of talk? of thought? we must not watch & wait & comment but act. but we are not yet living under the same house. we are semi-connected nodes, surfacing on SC's recent posts page, sometimes on twitter or twine or friendfeed & then submerging again.

we're shouting up here, across the void, how many are listening?

there are few of us, we have some architectural plans, have started digging the foundation; open source of course. but we need help. to be explicit:

who wants to start building our purposeful house?

Sat, Nov 21, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: architecture, video, polytopia, floating doctors, actualization, action
Sent to project: Polytopia

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ARGs, Participatory Entertainment, & Audience Agreements
Project: Polytopia

A talk I attended by Martin Erickson, Creative Director of The Company P (participatory, playful, pervasive) at Power to the Pixel 2009, the crossmedia filmmaking film forum.



There was also a workshop the next day with him. It quickly turned into a philosophical discussion on the implications of ARGs, pervasive gaming, TINAG (This Is Not A Game) & participatory entertainment.

I recorded the talk and fixed up the audio as best I could. Might be better to use headphones. Enjoy!

Download it on Archive.org HERE

Thanks to Jean-Yves & Gabriel Shalom for contributing greatly to the discussion!

And many, many thanks to Martin for leading a deeply insightful discussion.

Description of the workshop:

Is this a game? – Towards a constructive audience contract in the participatory arts.

All traditional art forms have established social contracts with their audience, dictating their behaviour and attitudes. Western movie audiences generally suspend disbelief, allowing them to be emotionally affected through a process of secondary identification with the characters on screen. Social entertainments like Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), participatory dramas and pervasive games are currently in the process of formulating this contract with its emerging global audience. Using the famous “TINAG” (This Is Not A Game) agreement used in most ARGs as a point of departure, this workshop explores the possibilities and pitfalls of encouraging different audience attitudes. The discussion and design exercises span the full range from pure competitive game-ism, via secondary identification, all the way to no-bars held 24/7 live-action role playing.

See all the videos from the first day of Power to the Pixel online HERE (highly recommended for ANY digital storytellers)

See the archive of tweets from #PTTP09 HERE

Sat, Oct 24, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: video, narrative, polytopia, collective intelligence, ARG, participation, alternate reality game, audience agreements, film, storytelling
Sent to project: Polytopia

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